Making Decision in Healthy and Cognitively Impaired Aging: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is a construct that involves a variety of symptoms that range from behavioral to cognitive impairment. This cluster of symptoms is frequently associated with poor decision-making (DM). DM is a complex behavior that requires higher-order cognitive functions and refers to making choices in risky and ambiguous conditions via gathering information and assessing options that allow identifying a decision. Systematic examination of how DM is related to pathological aging, particularly MCI, can be particularly relevant. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analyses to elucidate these relationships. Our results highlighted that MCI is associated with impaired decision-making in risky and ambiguous conditions. This difficulty can depend on various impairments that affect individuals with MCI. These concern difficulties in making advantageous choices that can be due to different alterations in the central and peripheral nervous system, which could lead to problems in tasks requiring feedback-based responses. These findings advance our understanding of DM in aging and suggest how DM alterations affecting MCI would have a consequence on the totality of executive functions and daily activities.